Free Arms and the Women by Reginald Hill Page A

violence in a good cause, what had provoked her to physical assault.
'It was using Rosie that did it,' she said. 'It was my own guilt feelings that really exploded, I suppose.'
'Your guilt feelings?'
Daphne wasn't Dalziel and she certainty wasn't that nebby infant, Novello.
She gave her a version of the confession she'd rehearsed when talking to the Fat Man, ending with, 'So you see what a mixed-up cow I've turned into. I feel like that base Indian - in Hamlet, is it? - who threw away the pearl richer than all his tribe. Only I got it back.'
'Othello, I think. And the point was he had no idea that what he'd got had any value at all. And you didn't throw Rosie away anyway,' said Daphne Aldermann sensibly. 'And you've always been a mixed-up cow, so no change there.'
It was, she felt, in her relationship with Ellie Pascoe, her avocation to be sensible. In upbringing, outlook and circumstance, the two women were light years apart. But the mad scientist of chance had chosen to set their opposing particles on a collision course some years earlier, and while a great deal of energy had been released, it had been through fusion rather than fission.
Ellie looked ready to meet her head-on in battle, but in the end diverted to a minor skirmish.
'You sure it's Othello ?' she said truculently. 'I thought the nearest you privately educated lot got to literature was carrying the Collected Works on your head during deportment lessons.'
'You're forgetting. They made us learn a classic each morning between the cross-country run and the first cold shower,' said Daphne. 'So OK, something bad happens to our kids, we feel responsible. Mothers are programmed that way. Or conditioned - let's not get into that argument.'
'I know that. But knowing doesn't stop you feeling. And being shocked how much you feel. Why ever I did it, I still can't believe I actually assaulted those people.'
'Oh, come on,' said Daphne, with all the ease of a natural supporter of corporal and capital punishment. 'They had it coming. God knows what they were going to do with you, but if they get caught, probably they'll get off with writing a hundred lines and probation. At least as he smiles at you out of the dock, you'll be able to think, I left my mark on you, mate!'
Ellie laughed and refilled their glasses. It had been one of the mad scientist's better ideas to have Daphne call round that morning. As soon as she saw her, Ellie realized that of all her friends, here was the one best suited to the circumstances. With Daphne she could get serious without getting heavy, and her different world view provided a stimulating, if sometimes infuriating, change of perspective.
They drank and Daphne said, 'So, how's Rosie? Did she get a whiff of all the excitement?'
'We tried to keep it from her, but you never know what they pick up, do you? I was tempted to keep her off school today, but that would have confirmed there was something going on. Anyway, the holidays start tomorrow, and she made such a fuss about getting back after her illness, she'd have been brokenhearted to miss the fun of the last day.'
'Children's hearts are made of one of the least frangible materials known to man,’ said Daphne with a mother-of-two's certainty. 'Especially girls'. I seem to recall breaking mine on an almost daily basis but somehow surviving without resort to Dr Christian Barnard. You too, I bet.'
'Perhaps. I never lost my best friend when I was Rosie's age, but,' said Ellie.
There'd been two girls stricken by the meningitis bug. The other, Rosie's classmate and best friend, Zandra, had died.
Daphne grimaced and said, 'I was forgetting that. Sorry. It's funny, a child's grief, unless you've experienced it yourself, you don't think about it much . . . but she was keen to get back to Edengrove, you say? I'd have thought . . .'
'Me too. We've talked about Zandra, naturally. Or rather I've talked. Rosie listens. But she doesn't say much beyond, the nix got her. You remember the nix? The water-imp in